Friday, October 13, 2006

Quemoy and Matsu, the tiny islands in dispute between Taiwan and Communist China, dominated tonight's nationally televised debate between the two candidates for president, Sen. John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon.

Nixon backed away from his earlier position that no territory "in the area of freedom" should be surrendered to the Communists. Last night he said the United States should defend the islands if China attacks them as "a prelude to an attack on Formosa," also known as Taiwan.

The Republican vice presidential candidate, Henry Cabot Lodge, meanwhile backed away from his pledge yesterday to include a Negro in a Nixon Cabinet. "I cannot pledge anything," he said. "His Harlem pledge has caused consternation and anger among some high Virginia Republicans," the New York Times would report in tomorrow's edition.

The Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series today, beating the New York Yankees 10-9. The Pirates, winning their first Series title in 35 years, clinched the game in the ninth inning with a home run by Bill Mazeroski at Forbes Field.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev left for Moscow from New York International Airport late tonight after calling again for world disarmament and absolving President Eisenhower of responsibility for the U-2 spy plane flights over his country.

In England the British government took a tough stance toward the Soviet Union, with an official saying the Soviets had a long-term strategy to overthrow democracy, not "short-term policies alternating rapidly between toughness and conciliation."

NASA shot three mice into space and returned them safely to earth today.

The permanent delegate to the United Nations from Cameroon said he was "singled out of a crowd of white persons walking on the west side of First Avenue near the UN building. I was blocked by a policeman who demanded my papers. No one else in the crowd was asked for papers. It so happened that I was the only Negro there at the time. ... I kept asking why I alone should show my pass and nobody else in the crowd. I had my pass but they seized me by the belt and about five policemen pushed me along to the police truck. I was taken to the police station."

Former President Harry Truman today criticized the Eisenhower administration for losing Cuba to the communists. "They have permitted the forces of communism to establish a new base in Cuba. The Panama Canal is now vulnerable and exposed. And communists are becoming entrenched just ninety miles from the Florida shores."

Jewish leaders in Washington today called on Vice President Nixon to repudiate the statement of his press secretary, Herbert Klein, that they called "an insult to our faith." Klein had said an editorial in an Israeli newspaper had "pointed up the fact that there were 2 million Jewish votes in the Unites States and that for the sake of Israel they should be cast for Nixon.

"This shocking appeal for votes from Americans of Jewish faith is an insult to our faith and to the political integrity of American Jews without regard to political affiliation," the Jewish leaders said.

US officials say the Soviets tried but failed to launch a spectacular space shot during Khrushchev's stay in the United States.

At the United Nations, Laos backed a proposal for a UN buffer zone in Southeast Asia to separate the Cold War powers. Meanwhile it would be reported tomorrow in the New York Times that Washington officials see Laos as one of the "most important diplomatic trouble spots. Officials here are fearful that the country may become the 'Congo of Southeast Asia.' A three-cornered civil war, though still limited in scope, has divided the country, and internal and external pressures from the communists have grown steadily."